Turkish Commandos Capture a Kurdish Leader in Raid Into Iraq

By STEPHEN KINZER

Published: April 15, 1998

ISTANBUL, Turkey, April 14—
Turkish commandos staged a raid into northern Iraq on Monday and captured a Kurdish rebel commander who had recently defected from the guerrilla leadership.

The commander, Semdin Sakik, was until last month a high-level leader of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a guerrilla force that has been fighting for more than 13 years to establish a homeland in southeastern Turkey for ethnic Kurds. Turkish military units have been seeking him for years, and several times during the 1990's they announced that they had killed him in combat.

Last month Mr. Sakik quit the guerrilla group he had helped build, apparently because of increasing tensions with its leader, Abdullah Ocalan. Since the beginning of this year there have been reports of an internal power struggle in the group.

After his defection Mr. Sakik sought refuge in northern Iraq, where a Kurdish enclave has existed since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991. He was welcomed by a moderate Kurdish faction, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, which has worked closely with the Turkish Government.

But the leader of the Democratic Party, Massoud Barzani, refused to turn Mr. Sakik over to the Turkish authorities. He evidently believed that by forming an alliance with Mr. Sakik, he could foment further divisions in the guerrilla movement and perhaps help his own cause.

Mr. Sakik, known as ''Fingerless Zeki'' after losing a thumb in combat, is said to have been responsible for many attacks in Turkey in the last decade. Army intelligence officers believe that he led the unit that surrounded a bus carrying 33 unarmed draftees through eastern Turkey in 1993 and shot them dead.

Northern Iraq exists in a state of near-anarchy, however, and the Turkish Army often stages anti-guerrilla operations there. The Iraqi Army is not permitted to operate there, and no military force is strong enough to challenge Turkey's power.

Early Monday morning, according to accounts by Turkish officers, about 30 commandos dressed as Kurdish fighters boarded a Sikorsky helicopter and flew to the northern Iraqi town of Dohuk, where Mr. Sakik was living. They reportedly found him and his brother Hasan in a car, captured them without bloodshed and took them to an interrogation center in the Turkish city of Diyarbakir.

It is normal in Turkey for the military to formulate strategies and to carry out operations without consulting the civilian authorities. Top Government leaders, including Prime Minister Mesut Yilmaz, said they had not been informed of the plans for the raid and had learned about it from news reports.

The Kurdistan Democratic Party, under whose protection Mr. Sakik had been living in Dohuk, said Turkey had no right to seize him.

''The K.D.P. strongly condemns and deplores this action by Turkish forces,'' it said in a statement. ''This act seriously undermines good-neighborly relations.''

After Mr. Sakik's defection, the guerrilla group to which he had belonged sent letters to Prime Minister Yilmaz and to Turkish generals offering to negotiate a cease-fire. Military commanders have repeatedly asserted in the last year that they have crushed the guerrilla movement, and the offer was ignored.

More than 27,000 people have died in the Kurdish conflict. Rebels say they are fighting for political and cultural rights, but the army describes them as terrorists who seek to cut away a piece of Turkish territory and to create their own nation.